// Comparison

Metasploit vs Sécurité informatique - Ethical Hacking: Which Should You Read?

Two cybersecurity books on Offensive, compared honestly: who each is for, what each does best, and which to read first.

Intermediate

4/52025

The Penetration Tester's Guide

David Kennedy, Mati Aharoni, Devon Kearns, Jim O'Gorman, Daniel G. Graham

The second edition of the definitive No Starch guide to the Metasploit Framework, updated by the project's original maintainers and newer contributors for the modern Framework.

Intermediate

4/52022

Sécurité informatique - Ethical Hacking

Apprendre l'attaque pour mieux se défendre

ACISSI

The French-language reference for offensive security: a thick, lab-heavy tour of the attacker's toolkit, maintained across editions by the ACISSI collective under the motto “learn the attack to better defend.”

Read this if

Pentesters and red teamers who want to know Metasploit cold, or developers who want to extend the Framework. Written by the original project leads and updated for the current ecosystem; the canonical Metasploit text.

French-speaking students and aspiring pentesters who want one comprehensive offensive-security manual: reconnaissance, network and web attacks, social engineering, forensics and Metasploit, all hands-on. The closest French equivalent to the English pentest canon.

Skip this if

Readers wanting modern post-exploitation tradecraft against well-defended targets. Metasploit shines in lab and OSCP-style scenarios; against modern EDR with kernel callbacks, the playbook is more nuanced than this book covers.

Advanced practitioners who already work in English and live in PortSwigger Academy and current tooling. The breadth means each topic is an introduction rather than a deep dive, and editions lag the fastest-moving tradecraft.

Key takeaways

Metasploit's value is workflow integration: payloads, post-exploitation modules, sessions, pivoting all wired together. The book teaches you to use the framework as a force multiplier, not as a list of exploits.
Custom modules (auxiliary, exploit, post) are how you turn Metasploit into your toolkit; the book's chapters on module development are the highest-leverage material.
The 2nd edition (2025) is updated for the modern Framework, mainstream Linux, and the current model of Meterpreter; the original 2011 edition is now dated.

The single most complete offensive-security book in French — breadth is the selling point, covering recon through forensics in one volume.
Every chapter is exercise-driven; treated as a workbook with a lab VM it teaches well, read passively it teaches little.
Multi-author and re-edited regularly, so quality is uneven chapter to chapter but currency beats most French tech books.

How they compare

Metasploit and Sécurité informatique - Ethical Hacking are both rated 4/5 in our catalog. Pick by topic preference and reading style rather than by rating.

Both books target intermediate-level readers, so the choice is about topic, not difficulty.

Metasploit and Sécurité informatique - Ethical Hacking both cover Offensive, Pentesting, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.

Keep reading

Metasploit

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